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.ORG Domain Extension: Make The World Better Together

.ORG, one of the oldest domain extensions, was introduced in January 1985 and now has more than 10 million domain names. We will cover the details about .ORG, the third most registered generic extension.

The Story of .ORG

.ORG was one of the original domain extensions introduced in 1985 together with .com, .net, .edu, etc. Its name “org” is derived from “organization,” and it was intended for non-profit organizations. Today there’s no restriction on using a .org domain for for-profit purposes and many people already do that.

The first .org domain name mitre.org was registered by The MITRE Corporation on 10 July 1985.

Public Interest Registry, a not-for-profit organization established by Internet Society, took over the operation of .ORG from Verisign in 2003. .ORG had 2.4 million registered domain names at that time. Verisign gave up .ORG in exchange for the right to maintain the operation of .COM.

In November 2019, .ORG’s registry organization Public Interest Registry was sold to the private equity firm Ethos Capital for $1.1 billion. .ORG community, some public institutions, and people who would be affected by the agreement raised concerns about the deal.

ICANN, the organization responsible for coordinating the procedures of DNS, delayed the deal two times, last time after the letter of California’s attorney general.

After the deal, the registry website has been changed from pir.org to thenew.org.

.ORG reached 10 million domain names in June 2012.

As of March 2020, it’s the third most registered generic domain extension with more than 10.4 million domain names.

More than 70 countries use .org as a second level domain extension such as .org.uk (United Kingdom), .org.cn (China), .org.au (Australia) and .org.tr (Turkey).

The Oldest .ORG Domain Names

wdt_ID

DOMAIN NAME

CREATE DATE

1

mitre.org

10 Jul 1985

2

src.org

25 Mar 1986

3

super.org

10 Jul 1986

4

aero.org

07 Jan 1987

5

mcnc.org

15 Jan 1987

6

rand.org

02 Apr 1987

7

mn.org

04 Apr 1987

8

rti.org

01 May 1987

9

usenix.org

14 Jul 1987

10

software.org

03 Sep 1987

The list above contains the oldest still-registered .org domain names that we detected using dofo.com’s database.

(Note: This list is not complete because not all the domain sales are reported. Domain sales data was taken from Namebio.)

5 of the 10 most expensive .org domain names are being used actively. Others are parked or not resolving.

Ready.org is also one of the most expensive sales of March 2020. See the full list here.

There are 256,443 domain name sales over $1,000, and 10,333 of these sales, which is 4%, are .org.

Top Countries of .ORG Domain Extension

The United States ranks first in the list, having the most .org registrations with 5.9 million domain names. Canada and Germany are following the US with 930 and 500 thousand domain names respectively.

Panama is in fourth place on the list because some of the Whois privacy services use addresses in Panama.

Most Popular Keywords of .ORG Domains

wdt_ID

KEYWORD

DOMAIN COUNT

1

foundation

118,642

11

life

61,916

12

health

61,453

13

center

59,175

14

church

56,927

15

group

54,892

16

online

52,540

17

school

47,744

18

club

46,340

19

project

46,097

The most popular 10 keywords for .org domain names are foundation, life, health, center, church, group, online, school, club, and project. More than 45 thousand .org domain names registered for each keyword in the list.

It isn’t surprising that the word foundation is the first keyword in the list. Other words related to “organization” such as center, church, school and project are also in the list, unlike .com and .net.

The keywords life, group, and online are common with the top 10 popular keywords of .com.

.ORG Domain Count By Years

*2020: As of 20 April 2020

Every day thousands of domain names are being deleted because of not being renewed. The numbers above are not the total registration count for each year. These are the number of registered and still-existing .org domain names for each year.

.ORG Domain Count by Length

There are 17 single-letter .org domain names registered before IANA’s restriction of single-letter and single-digit domain names registration in December 1993. 8 of them redirect to the website of the owner institution.

One digit .org domain names are for sale on Sedo for $1 million except 7.org (The David Beckham Unicef Fund) and 8.org (Donate 8).

Top .ORG Registrars

wdt_ID

REGISTRAR

DOMAIN COUNT

1

Godaddy

3,700,000

2

Network Solutions

630,000

3

Tucows

590,000

4

Namecheap

420,000

5

IONOS - 1&1

380,000

6

Google

360,000

7

Enom

360,000

8

Public Domain Registry

280,000

9

Wild West

185,000

10

Fast Domain

185,000

With 3.7 million .org domain names, almost 36% of all .org domain names, GoDaddy tops the registrar list. Network Solutions, Tucows, Namecheap, and IONOS are following it with 630, 590, 420 and 380 thousand domain names, respectively.

How Many of .ORG Domain Names are Being Actively Used?

We know that not all registered domain names have a website on them. 5.7 millions of .org domains have active websites (with at least one page) and the remaining 4.7 million domains are not being used.

ACTIVE WEBSITE: 5.7 million

NO WEBSITE: 3.2 million

PARKED: 1.5 million

“No website” means the domain name is not resolving at all.

.ORG Domain Names for Sale on Marketplaces

More than 30 million domain names are listed for sale on several marketplaces and 1.6% of these domain names are ending with .org. There are more than 500 thousand .org domains listed on the marketplaces such as Sedo, Afternic and GoDaddy Auctions.

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